6 March 1926  81 Harley Street  London

Dear Professor,

Very many thanks for the latest book.^[1]  It will create general gratitude to you for writing it and joy at the proof of your continued energy.  I have read it through rapidly and will record a few of my first impressions, which will of course be deepened later.

I do not think I ever enjoyed a book of yours more, which is saying very much indeed, as you must know.  It is exactly the kind of book of yours that gives me a special pleasure, with that fine dissection of clinical findings, the constant clarifying of confused issues, and the repeated emerging of useful generalisations.  I could not refrain from thinking also how Abraham would similarily have delighted in it.  One misses him at every moment.

Have you noticed how your last four or five books have regularly alternated in style?  One very abstruse and difficult is followed by one easy and flowing ‑‑ generally misleadingly easy, for it is just as rich and deep as the other kind.

So far as I have apprehended the content at this first reading I find it entirely persuasive and convincing.  I could at once agree with all the arguments and conclusions, though it reveals how much more there is for us to ascertain and elucidate.  I especially liked the lovely generalisation contrasting repression and outer Gegenbesetzung with regression and inner Gegenbesetzung (S. 113),^[2] the description of how the ego gets reconciled to symptoms, the setting up of Abwehr as a general term with its sub‑divisions, relation of Angst to Symptombildung, and of course the tracing of Angst to the ego instead of to the Libido.  I say 'of course' in the last instance because this is one of the few matters in which I have never been able to feel satisfied with your formulations, and so long ago as in 1910 when I wrote my exposé of the pathology of morbid anxiety I felt bound to take the opposite view and maintain that Angst was generated from the ego in response to the dangers brought about by libidinal demands.  I remember at least twice discussing the matter with you (before the war, and again at The Hague Congress), but was never able to convey my argument with success.  Indeed I still see no reason why the same explanation could not be applied to the more primitive case (S. 88) (infancy and actual neurosis) which you distinguished so beautifully from the case of danger signal.^[3] Incidentally it occurred to me that an analogy between the traumatic and the danger situations (S. 126)^[4] was shewn in 1914 when Germany declared a general state of Kriegsgefahr [war threat], an institution which I do not think exists in any other country; it was of course followed by the trauma of war itself.

There follow a few disjointed comments.  I can confirm through a particular patient your connection between the phenomenon of isolation and Berührungsscheu (S. 60).^[5] She complained prominently of not being able to associate any idea with the ideas that would logically follow from it, and this proved to be a radiation of forbiden onanism.  The mechanism is not quite the same as in the isolation of the obsessional neurotic (it was a case of hysteria), but the effect and symbolism are very similar.

Your stateement (S. 39) that Angst makes the repression not vice versa,^[6] which surely agree with your old description of Urverdrängung as a Fluchtversuch, wouldn't it?  Flight is biologically secondary to the perception of danger (Angst signal).

I am not entirely satisfied with the decision whether the Abwehr is primarily against the Libido or the hostility connected with the latter (S. 65 etc.),^[7] or with the escape from the dilemma by pointing to the libidinal component of what you term the sadistic aggression against the father (S. 36)«FN1.××Freud (1926d, p. 106), «MDUL»G.W.«MDNM» 14:135.» what speaks in favour of your view is that one sees less repression if the attitude towards the rival is one of pure hate (e.g. a stranger), but when one thinks of the early history of mankind, when there would not be so much love for the Urvater as in later times (much of it is a secondary reaction‑formation), it would seem more natural to regard the first repressions as due to fear on the part of the son that his hostility would provoke dangerous reprisals from the father.

Your clear account of the «MDUL»series«MDNM» of danger situations solves a problem that has occupied me in my analyses of female homosexuals, namely what in the female corresponds with castration in the male as the resolver of the Oedipus complex?  After working through various layers I found as the deepest with them the dread of being disapproved of and «MDUL»deserted«MDNM» by the father, because this meant the loss of all hope of penis and child.  But in the more normal woman why is the dread of the mother so great.  What can the mother do?  (Perhaps seperate [«MDUL»sic«MDNM»] daughter and father?).  At all events the development from «MDUL»Verlassenheit«MDNM» [abandonnment] to Castration is most illuminating.  It can also be confirmed on the other side, the reactions of the parent.  I have good examples of castration reactions in the mother after weaning her child.  And my wife produced a neat illustration of Angst after leaving children last year when she unwillingly parted from them to go abroad.  We slept the first night on board ship and she woke me up with a startled cry "Ernest, where are the children, I can't find them "; there was a strong wish‑illusion of their being in the room.

My last comment, for the moment, is that you provide a fourth, and perhaps most important, reason in addition to the three you related to me at the time of why you were not more disturbed by the difficulty with Rank.  It is now clear that you were wise enough to do what none of us others could do, namely to learn something from it all by allowing Rank's views to work on you in a stimulating and fruitful way.  What a splendid reaction to a depressing difficulty ‑‑ «MDUL»alle Ehre«MDNM» [hats off]!

Again thank you a thousand times for what will be a permanent source of inspiration to further thought and work.

Yours always greatfully  Ernest Jones

^[1]    Freud (1926d).

^[2]    Freud (1926d, p. 159), G.W. 14:191.

^[3]    Freud (1926d, p. 141), G.W. 14:172

^[4]    Freud (1926d, pp. 166‑167), G.W. 14:199‑200.

^[5]    Freud (1926d, pp. 121‑122), G.W. 14:152

^[6]    Freud (1926d, p. 109), G.W. 14:137.

^[7]    Freud (1926d, pp. 125 ff.), G.W. 14:155.